April (63 page)

"Heather is an excellent data searcher. I'd suggest getting her started on a target list. There was something else I wanted to ask. If we don't have any losses loading these machines you'll have a small quantity of fluid left over. Do you think I could run an experiment with it I've been thinking about?" he asked her, trying to sound casual.

"I don't see any problem with that. After we're past this rush talk to me about it. Pressure is down. Let's get it out there and try it." They posted a paper vacuum notice on the corridor lock port, to back up the readouts, an extra safety step Happy insisted on when using his cubic and opened both doors of the coffin lock in the outer bulkhead. Two of Dave's men at the scooter outside came in and started taking all the nuts off the perimeter of the wall and boxing them for later. They were old style untreated studs and nuts, messy with chalky vacuum anti-seize and they wore thin disposable over-gloves for the mess, but none of them were seized surprisingly. The whole plate was eventually loose and the experienced workers eased it to the side and fastened it down over an adjoining cubic.

Very few of the owners ever removed an outer bulkhead so they didn't have to worry about someone crowding their work space. Two neighbors had consented to allow them to use their outside surface, so the
Happy Lewis
was turned around over the adjoining cubic. A pretty brave thing to do, considering what a know target the
Happy Lewis
was now. They had asked in person so there could be no record of it on the com system, to incriminate the neighbors if there should be retribution down the road.

They eased the gravitational projector up and over the edge, to mount temporarily on the outer hull. It was not terribly massive. Only about two hundred kilograms, but the mechanics moved it with easy patience. This sort of work was where Easy had gotten his nick name. Moving massive girders and plates, he was known to the other workers for repeating - "Easy, easy, easy as you go there." He liked to tell people in a hurry, he never took time off to grow new fingers, because he was careful and not in a rush moving things in zero G. The crew immediately started extending the white camouflage tarp and frame over the exposed hole.

When the machine was bolted down it was nothing very special to look at. It sort of resembled a miniature industrial assembly robot. They curled back the edge of the camouflage tarp, to give them a view of the sky. Jeff attached his pad and aimed at an empty piece of the sky as they had agreed. He made the image from the telescope come on the screen to double check it was clear.

It was aimed at space between two upright metal channels which were temporarily clamped to the hull, like the projector itself. At his nod two of Dave's guys lifted a small plate of outer hull, like the one they had unbolted to open the room. It was only about two hundred millimeters square and mounted on two tubes along the edges. They positioned it between the uprights and clamped the tubes to them so it was right in front of the business end of the projector.

"I've done this before," Nam-Kah reminded him. "Your turn today if you'd like."

"OK," he accepted. For a moment he didn't know what to say. Then he spoke in the suit radio with the power turned low, as they kept them for privacy and said, "Heads up. Live fire test taking place. Fire in the hole." He pushed the enter key on his pad to actuate it. The plate had a hole in the middle, faster than the eye could see the process. It was about twenty centimeters in diameter with the curled edge away from the projector. The uprights holding it gave a jerk and the entire cantilevered frame visibly vibrated for a few seconds. But not with as much force as you'd expect from anything which could punch a hole in this sturdy a plate. Jeff was sure it would move as much if he just hit it with a half-kilo hand hammer. The projector itself however had not moved enough in recoil for Jeff to feel, although he was holding on to its frame with his left hand.

Nam Kah eased over and had to stop and untangle her safety line from around her leg. She had an even smaller section of plate in her hand which was the cut-out piece of hull they had accidentally punched a hole in on ISSII. The holes looked as close to identical as they could tell by eye. "The mass of active material in the core is only a quarter but the effect seems the same," Nam-Kah said in a slow thoughtful tone. They looked at each other with the bright look of discovery and said simultaneously, "Quantum phenomena," and then laughed at themselves.

Chapter 30

April scrubbed until she was raw. She'd never thought she'd feel clean again. She didn't have any more suit liners, but she put on the sheerest tights under soft cotton shorts and a long sleeved cotton t-shirt turned inside out, so the seams couldn't rub. It would do to go back in the p-suit, which she felt certain she'd need to do soon. She wasn't ready to be locked inside the suit again right now.

First she called up Jon and asked if they had cut com to Earth, knowing they were going to be attacked.  He assured her the radio room had their own router set up, with one of his men physically protecting it and making sure no traffic was passing to Earth that might harm them. There would be very limited bandwidth through their own firewall, until Eddie and a couple helpers were satisfied no data miners were running in their system.

Confident she was safe to talk openly on local com, she called her grandpa and asked about the ship. He was sitting in the pilot's seat and reported no space activity outside at all. They had a full load again of fuel and reactive mass. A new cask of heavy water also.

He'd learned Jeff was so worried about having enough deuterium, he had set a separator up to mine the station's water supply, until they could get supplied from the moon. They'd learned from their flight and the new stocks of consumables was improved. They had more first aid items, almost a minisurgery and better food and spares. They were even configuring a set of real acceleration couches for the rear space, which could be taken in or out. She was glad to hear it all.

She had never owned any material thing before, with the sort of attachment she was forming with the ship and she hung up happy to know it was serviced and started rolling up her suit to bring along. She intended to keep it close, if she had to rush to the ship. She wanted to rest but her dad was meeting with the other investors and she intended to go along with him. He might object, but she was going to be there if she had to force her way into the room at gunpoint.

* * *

Dave was at the
Happy Lewis
with April's grandpa in his namesake, working on a panel which would go in the overhead in front of the laser and bulge down into the cabin. Happy didn't like what it did to the cabin, but having been briefed by Jeff what it would do he accepted it. The bulge was going to house one of the projectors the Singhs were building. Some of the final details were unresolved, but the basic wiring for the servos and the base plate design were set already, no matter what size container was finalized for the quantum fluid. They would be able to bolt it down, plug it in power and computer access and test it as soon as it was delivered.

Dave was talking to him as he worked about outfitting another scooter Eddie had bought as quickly as they could, with an improved plasma drive and another of the projectors so they would not be ruined if one ship was destroyed. Jeff had given his tentative Okay on that, as long as he could come to terms with Eddie over licensing and safeguarding the technology. This led to a discussion of fitting some charges so the crew could destroy the vessel if it was damaged beyond recovery and had to be abandoned.

 Jeff coming in and hearing the idea agreed, but he offered one of his charged accumulators so the ship would be completely vaporized with nothing to analyze after the explosion. In the end they agreed it would be set from the control panel, with provisions to plug in a dead man's switch. The decision left them sobered and there wasn't much light hearted chatter after such a sobering vision.

Jeff privately concluded he had to make sure nobody was going to crack open these devices and steal the technology even if a crew surrendered. Not that he was going to keep the booby-traps a secret. It was just none of them realized how diabolically effective he could make them. In fact he concluded he really needed a redundant system to destroy them if need be, from outside too. Something others didn't control. Well, some of the hammers he was already building in his head would serve for that too. If they were a little heavy handed he'd have a hard time feeling sorry for a thief.

* * *

The USNA Heavy Shuttle
Cincinnati
was approaching M3 with some caution. N.A. Space Command had informed the crew in vague terms, about the battle with the Chinese which had happened earlier and how the exhaust plume of the
Happy Lewis
was seen near M3. There were multiple engine emissions of the sort her drive created in the area of the station. They refused to speculate if it meant there were other space craft like her there. Not elaborating on either statement when pressed.

Commander Darrel Hoyle was a careful man, a country boy and a student of military history. He had no desire to be remembered like Custer, for being suckered into an overwhelming ambush. He was the sort of student, who had not only gone out to the battlefield of that famous engagement and walked it, but had gone to the extraordinary trouble of arranging to ride the site by the Little Bighorn on a horse, as the combatants had. When he was through, he could no longer understand why Custer's hometown of Monroe Michigan made such a point of memorializing the memory of such an impulsive, inept, vainglorious tactician.

So when he approached M3 he took pains to listen to all the traffic on the local control net and the open traffic on the station com. He informed local control he would be doing a fly around and took a full forty minutes to do a triangular path around the station some kilometers off. Far enough away not to interfere with construction traffic or any shuttles coming or going, although Earthside control told him there were no departure requests or arrivals scheduled from other stations.

One thing he did notice was all the construction traffic and scooters working all seemed to find reason to finish up what they were doing and dock. By the end of their circuit they had the heavens to themselves.

"You ever watch any old Westerns Matt?" He asked his copilot.

"Never especially cared for them D. I was always partial to science fiction, even though some of the worst movies ever made were SiFi. The books were always better, but the interest was always there since I was about six. I'm pretty sure it's why I ended up in this seat."

"Well, when the bad guy walked into town he always walked right down the center of the dusty street, with his black hat on and challenged the authority of the good guy who was almost always the reluctant, but fast on the draw, Marshal. You know how you could tell he was the bad guy besides the hat?"

"Nope. Can't say as I know the formula."

"In the movie the townsfolk ran out, grabbing their kids off the street and the honest working people with their aprons and work coats on moved, quickly to get off the street before the bullets started flying. Sometimes they'd even show the scared shopkeeps locking their doors and turning their sign over in the window saying they were closed."

"I see," he said. "So you think there's a parallel here with the way traffic has, uh, diminished upon our arrival?"

"Yup. And there's something else you about the formula you should know. In a few of those movies, the courageous Marshall went out to face the bad guys alone, thinking he had no friends who would stand beside him. But at the end when he lay wounded in the street, all those indignant bakers and blacksmiths would poke a bunch of rifles and shotguns out the windows and blew the bad guy into bloody tatters in an unexpected show of support."

"Well, we did do our circuit with the laser mast deployed and the targeting lidar illuminating everything in sight. Not to mention our missile bay doors open. Some might have taken it as an unfriendly gesture."

"Yeah, well the gunslinger always paused dramatically at the start and slid his coat back and tucked it behind his holster. I'd hate to break the formula."

"What I don't understand is you keep identifying us with the bad guy D. Haven't they told you we're on the side of the Angels?"

"Yeah, they've been telling me since I was a kid. But I hope the folks over there," he nodded at the station, "know it too. Tell local control we are going to dock at the South Hub."

"Local control this is USNA Heavy Shuttle
Cincinnati
out of the Cape for dock. We will be docking at the South Hub terminal. Please advise any conflicting traffic to avoid us." He suddenly felt like an ass for saying that with not a single ship, scooter or suit in sight.

"
Cincinnati
you have no conflicting traffic. You are clear for dock."

"Control what is the situation on the station? Is there disorder or is everything calm?"

"
Cincinnati
, what the hell do you want me to say?" he asked angrily. "I just got told by Earthside Control I could not perform normal traffic functions for the
Happy Lewis,
on pain of being charged with aiding the enemy. So if I admit knowing anybody is unhappy with you I'm screwed for knowing a traitor. And if I say no, everything is happiness and light and somebody blows your silly ass off when you come in, I'm screwed for not warning you. I just tell spacecraft where to go, when they are in the mood to listen. If you want political commentary tune in the Voice of America, not Local Control at M3. When I came on shift everybody was going about their business as usual. But they had a station wide com alert a couple hours ago to check your pressure suit and make sure it was functional and handy."

"I know you don't live on a station but we get a little paranoid about breathing. We got you guys coming in on our station and I assume you have weapons that will depressurize us if they are used. So a lot of folks are probably like me. I have my p-suit on and called the wife and made her put her suit on and the boys too. We even made the kids put on their helmets, which they hate, but in a blow out my wife won't have to deal with screwing three helmets on."